At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)
“The lips of the righteous know what is acceptable: But the mouth of the wicked speaketh frowardness” (Prov. 10:32).
We have here a contrast between the speech of the righteous and the speech of the wicked. The focus of the contrast shows that the righteous considers how and where his words are going to land. The wicked just goes forward with his frowardness. Frowardness is an archaic term meaning perverse or perverted.
The wicked just wants to vent. He is going to say what he is going to say and, as it were, damn the torpedos. The righteous knows what is acceptable. He considers what is appropriate, given the circumstance and situation. He speaks the truth, but he navigates as he goes. In this situation, the wicked is simply a bulldozer.
Communication consists of three elements. There is the speaker, there is the message, and there is the recipient. A godly speaker—a preacher, say—needs to be a student of all three. He is engaged in constructing a bridge, to use the image John Stott used, between two worlds. There is the world of Scripture, and there is the world inhabited by the listeners. Each one has its own language, context, grammar, and syntax. The speaker is a translator, translating from one language to the other.
If he is a righteous preacher, as per our proverb, he knows how to state the unchanging truths of God’s Word in a way that is “acceptable.” He must not trim God’s Word in order to make it acceptable, but there is a way to frame it that does not ruffle feathers unnecessarily.
But the wicked man is a blunderbuss. And because he is advancing perversions, and all of his listeners come from a sinful race, this is one of the reasons why he can get away with it for a time. But only for a time.
